Germany to Stop Publishing ‘Der Landser’

Perhaps to set things right before Yom Kippur, the German magazine publisher of Life & Style, In Touch, and other popular mainstream publications announced Friday that it will stop publishing a pulp magazine criticized for valiant portrayals of Nazi war criminals.

Der Landser said it featured tales of ordinary soldiers on the front lines in World War II, but the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles thought otherwise. In a recent report, the Wiesenthal Center documented how officers and units featured in the magazine were involved in Nazi mass murders. In it, Stefan Klemp found that “In fact, the stories in the Der Landser magazine sanitize the Third Reich by presenting stories of conventional warfare out of context. The war they present appears to be an adventure, albeit with some casualties.” In one recent issue, Herman Fegelein, an SS commander responsible for the murder of 40,000 Soviet Jews, was introduced as a hero.

In response to Bauer Media Group’s decision, Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center, released a statement calling it a “major victory.”